Medieval Faire Photos

There were dragons. There were pirates. There were knights in chain mail and shining armor. There were men in kilts, ladies in medieval gowns. Minstrels sang, blacksmiths plied their trade, and craft vendors of all descriptions hawked their wares. It rained when we first arrived and again when we were leaving, but for several hours it cleared and we were able to enjoy the Ft. Tryon Park medieval faire.

We saw jousting and swordplay but what I liked best were the costumes. The Society for Creative Anachronism was there and we had a nice chat with them. Some people fashioned their own medieval costumes, like the man who painstakingly linked 16,000 aluminum rings together to make a suit of chain mail. There were people of all ages, from a 3 month old baby in a tiny jester's cap, to an elderly lady dressed like a queen.

There were enough dragons, carved, painted and tee shirts, to feed Jason's appetite. There was an artist who did "butt sketches" of people, seen from the back. I saw some fun tee shirts:

Come to the dark side, we have cookies

I sacked Isengard and all I got was this lousy tee shirt

Ninjas? Pirates? A Jedi fears not these things

The food was plentiful. For $10 we received huge portions of chicken breast, and two side dishes plus a huge piece of bread. The chicken was actually way too much to eat in one sitting. I ate about half, saved some between the bread (folded in half it still was big enough for a sandwich), and threw some of it out. I don't like to waste food but I wasn't going to stuff myself silly either.

We met a very young Robin Hood. He's exactly the guy we need now, with the mess our economy is in. Too bad he wasn't old enough to run for President!

Years ago I used to attend the Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo, New York. This event was free whereas the fair in Tuxedo is pretty expensive. Yet I didn't see that much of a difference, which made this a terrific value. Now that we've discovered it I'll make it a point to come back next year.

What a train wreck!

No, I'm not talking about a subway collision. I'm talking about Shattered Dreams, the book we are going to discuss at the next BHC book club meeting.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

It's about Irene Spencer, a woman who grew up in a polygamist cult right here in the United States. She was brainwashed into believing in "The Principle" as the most important of God's commandments: to be polygamous and bear as many children as possible. The rationale behind this seemed to be that the man who creates a huge family with 7 or more wives will be some sort of mini-god in the afterlife and will rule over some other planet, with his wives and children exalted along with him. Those who don't live the polygamous life, women that is, can't be pulled through the veil by their husbands, so they end up as "angels," lonely forever in eternity.

Using this as a justification, the children were indoctrinated to believe they must live in a polygamous marriage. And Irene followed the rules even though she did not agree, and was made miserable by "doing God's will." She ended up in a polygamous marriage of over 7 wives, more than 50 children altogether fathered by one man, Verlan LeBaron. Not only did she suffer the pangs of jealousy and loneliness (which these cultists claimed was a sin), she also endured back breaking work raising her own 13 children and often taking care of the other kids by other wives.

Because no one man can possibly support such a family on an ordinary salary, and Verlan was no Trump or Rockefeller, Irene and her c0-wives endured terrible poverty. They lived in places like Mexico and Nicaragua to avoid detection in the U.S. which enforces anti-polygamy laws more stringently. Often they lived without running water, without indoor toilets, in incomplete houses or even in refurbished chicken coops.

Even with the obvious suffering and the patent absurdity of trying to live this lifestyle and give one's children adequate love and attention, not to mention getting love and attention from one man who rotates his schedule to spend time with each wife, Irene was expected to put a happy face on it and pretend in public that she was thrilled to be living in lonely, degraded squalor for the sake of celestial glory.

Although she argued and tried to fight back as the humiliations grew worse and worse, Irene never quite got up the gumption to walk away permanently from the train wreck of a polygamous life. And here's where I am afraid I have to lose a bit of sympathy for her and begin blaming the victim.

If no one in her life had encouraged her to think outside the cage, I'd have to concede that her brainwashing was so complete that it might absolve her of the responsibility to take control of her own life. But that was not the case, and here's where I just don't get it. Her mother was made miserable in polygamy, and encouraged Irene to break away from it. At 15, Irene had a boyfriend named Glen, a man in his 20's, who loved her dearly and wanted to marry her -- monogamously.

Despite her mother's urging and Glen's adoration, she fell right into the trap. Personally, I think she dug her own grave and should have gone with Glen when she had the chance. Yes, her sister and brother in law (later her husband) intervened, but she had no backbone and no guts. She walked out of Glen's house where she'd been holding his hand and planning their future, and then meekly and stupidly got into the car with Verlan and Charlotte (his first wife and her half-sister), and ended up marrying Verlan.

Throughout all the deprivation, loneliness and poverty, as the humiliations mounted each time Verlan put another woman before her, Irene didn't gather up the gumption to walk away. She finally told Verlan she was going to leave him. But was she, really? We'll never know, because Verlan was killed in a car accident. If this wasn't a memoir, I'd call that a cheap use of Deus ex Machina to help her escape when she didn't have the courage to do it herself.

Oh, yes, part of her excuse was that in her cult, a wife was free to leave but the husband "owned" the children. What nonsense. Other than Charlotte, none of the other wives were legally married to Verlan. They could have picked themselves up and taken the children with them, and the "husband" would have had no legal recourse whatever. In fact this legalism was exploited by these families, who got the mothers and their children on welfare claiming to be "single mothers" who somehow got pregnant again every year.

And then when Verlan died, Irene went through intense mourning for "a wonderful human being." What wonderful human being, may I ask? Oh, he was brainwashed too, but in his case the brainwashing worked in his favor. But this was the man who would only make love to her once a month and not when she was pregnant or after menopause (though she was able to beg enough to get him to break with his principles just a little bit). This was the man who forced her to "give away" subsequent brides to him in the polygamous marriage ceremony. He even took her wedding ring and put it on the finger of one of his subsequent wives. So her deep mourning for him just doesn't ring true. He wasn't in her life often enough to warrant it, even though he was her "husband" for well over 20 years.

Irene escaped the misery of polygamy by an accident, and she later became a born again Christian. She is now in a monogamous marriage that she never would have had if her "husband" had lived. I'm glad she is living the life she always wanted and receiving all of one man's love, but she is no heroine. Yes, she wrote her memoir and she speaks out about the realities of polygamy but I would respect her a lot more if she had stiffened her spine all those years ago and married her first love.

September 11th

I had to wait a few days before approaching this subject. Every year it is like pulling a bandaid off a wound that hasn't fully healed, and it wells up and bleeds again.

People were going about their business. I went to HMI and did some volunteer data entry. I tried to put on the streaming video of the memorial ceremony but the computer's speakers weren't on and I couldn't figure out how to turn them on. So I gave it up.

After the volunteering, I ate lunch out, and then walked to Union Square, where I listened to a few minutes of the September Concert, an effort to fill the skies with music every September 11th. The music was pleasant but I didn't feel satisfied with that. Somehow the symbolic gestures just aren't reaching me the way they once might have. I remember people creating paper cranes for peace, and wondering back then just what effect on the real world this could possibly have.

September 11, 2001 was one of those days that stands out in my mind forever, not unlike the day JFK was shot a month before my 9th birthday. When it all actually happened I was sleeping. It was Jason's fourth day back at school after being homeschooled for four years. I was getting him accustomed to walking or taking the train to school by himself. So that morning I walked him halfway, and then returned home. I had a brief phone conversation and by 8:30 AM I lay down to take a morning nap.

While I was sleeping, the world changed forever. I had a dream while I was asleep, and I believe it had to do with the attack on the World Trade Center.

September 11th is also the anniversary of my Mom's death in 1995. I'd never had a visitation from her on the anniversary of her death, but this time she appeared in my dream, standing up and walking on her own without a cane or walker. She looked much younger than the almost-79 years she had accumulated at the time of her death, and she was cheerful and smiling. She wore a hot pink tunic and pants outfit she bought in the 1970's, that I still have today. Also in the dream, she hugged and kissed me, which had never happened before. I felt that she was telling me she was "in the pink," and that everything was fine.

But at a few minutes before 11, I was startled awake by the telephone. Bruce frantically shouted at me not to go near lower Manhattan. I thought he was going to say there was a big delay on the subways. Instead he said, "The United States is at war! The World Trade Center is down!"

I couldn't even take that in. "What do you mean the World Trade Center is down? How can it be down?"

After I hung up the phone I put on the radio and heard the whole horror story. It was mind boggling. Because the Twin Towers had the major TV antenna atop one of them, we could only get reception on one channel. Over and over I watched the airplanes crash into the towers and the towers bend over like limp spaghetti and collapse in flames. Outside, it was preternaturally beautiful, clear blue skies (except in the direction of Manhattan where smoke and haze hung over the horizon), sunshine, gorgeous September warmth. There was an eerie stillness because all air traffic had been halted. At first, they thought there was another plane missing. Or maybe it was Flight 93, and later they found the site where those brave souls took their plane down.

I listened to the radio until it was time to meet Jason at the train station, as we had arranged. Kids from the local high school were standing around joking as if it were an ordinary day. I wondered if they had been told or had any idea of what was going on. If they did, how could they stand there and joke?

When Jason arrived, he clearly knew the score. "The trains aren't running," he told me.

"They're not running into or out of Manhattan. But they are traveling in Brooklyn."

He told me that they'd notified the students. In fact, earlier in the day I called the school and asked if they were sending students home. The middle school office told me that they were trying to keep the day as normal as possible for the kids but that parents were welcome to pick them up. I'd decided not to alarm Jason further by picking him up. I knew Bruce was safe, though I didn't know how he was going to get home from Long Island City, since his usual route was through Manhattan.

It was primary day. I forget if I'd already voted, but in any case the primary was rescheduled for September 25th.

The shock and anger stayed with me, probably with most New Yorkers, for a long time. We fortunately did not know anyone who died in the attack, so I found myself mourning the buildings even though I knew the loss of life was far more important. Maybe I just couldn't take it in.

I still feel we should hunt down Bin Laden and his cronies. It won't make the world safe, but at least those particular bottom feeders won't be able to harm innocent people again. We belonged to the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture at the time, and I was disgusted by the way many people there turned the anger inward, and directed it at the U.S. and its policies, as if we somehow deserved this. We almost left membership at that time, and in retrospect, maybe that would have been a good thing.

In any case, while life goes on, I do think the scars remain for me and for many of us. What I really want to see them build in the footprint would be a new set of Twin Towers, identical to the first, but fortified so that no airplane attack could bring them down. That would give the terrorists the finger..in fact two of them.

Chosen Forever

A few days ago I finished reading Chosen Forever by Susan Richards. It's her sequel to Chosen by a Horse which I haven't yet read, but sounds like a lovely and touching memoir. In Chosen by a Horse she wrote about Lay Me Down, an abused horse she adopted, and then fell in love with. Her relationship with this sweet mare went a long way towards healing her emotional wounds from a childhood of being ignored and unwanted.

In Chosen Forever Ms. Richards describes her experiences after her first book is published, when she goes on a book tour that tries her courage and brings her back into contact with old friends and family. She's also "chosen" once again by a confident older man who knows what he wants the moment he sees her. Ironically, she lives in a house he once owned, and she remembered him as being arrogant at the closing.

But she realizes that what looked like arrogance is confidence and belief in himself, two attributes she very much lacks throughout most of this memoir. Towards the end, though, she begins to relax and not be so frightened of reading before an audience, or worse yet, reading to an empty room.

And the man who has chosen her finally wins her over, and at last, she marries him. It's a happy, almost a Cinderella ending, and it is all because of Lay Me Down, the mare who chose Ms. Richards. One serendipitous event leads to another, and finally, leads to happiness.

One anecdote that stands out in the story is the episode where Ms. Richards is suddenly visited by six men, when ordinarily she hardly ever has visitors. They comment about the horses being in danger on the ice of her pond, and just after they say this, a horse she is boarding walks out onto the ice and falls through. Then the men rush out onto the ice and rescue the horse, saving her life.

The message she got from this was that she would receive what she needed when she needed it, and that people would be there for her. This was an important message that went to the core of her insecurities.

It's a good book, though at times I felt she was whining a bit about her tough childhood and her anxiety level when she had to read her work aloud. Now I'd like to read Chosen by a Horse and see if it measures up.

Sub-Prime Sublime

This year, Circus Amok brought us the tale of "Sub-Prime Sublime," which began with poor little Dorothy clicking her sneakered heels together and reciting, "There's no place like home," over and over, but she couldn't seem to make the magic work. Glinda explained to her that she has no home, and Dorothy wailed aloud as Glinda told her that her landlord's house was foreclosed, and therefore, Dorothy the renter was out in the cold too.

The Liberty Sisters, Sibyl Liberty, Statue of Liberty and Liberty Belle, invited Dorothy to join them on a quest for a particle accelerator. Various adventures ensued: rich snooty women jumped up in the audience demanding a huge glass tower to live in. Flying zebras danced around the stage, and Harry Potter crossed the Alps on a high wire. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ran for the hills, and we heard a lecture on the history of racist credit exploitation. Dorothy and her friend tried to rob a bank, and a crazy Keystone Kops scene ensued.

There was no yellow brick road, but there was a particle accelerator at the end of the journey, and the spirit of Buckminster Fuller assured us that we would change from manufacturing weaponry to manufacturing livingry (his actual words in some of his writing), and all would be set right.

Circus Amok is always a gas. This was the second year we've seen them. They performed beside Astroland, which was enjoying its very last day before the greedy developers were to shut it down. Pretty ironic.

Last month when I was working at Neighborhood Housing Services I told some of the staff about Circus Amok and suggested they catch this year's show since it is so relevant to their work. I hope someone will. Who knows, they may even invite some of the performers to one of their events!

"Pit Bull in Lipstick"

Now, there's a gorgeous image of Sarah Palin, McCain's pick for his running mate, all right. I can only hope he's succeeded in shooting himself in the foot. Now, if he'd chosen Condi as his running mate, I'd be worried. But this woman is so huge a mistake that the word should be tattooed in inch-high letters across her forehead. The delegates may have been smiling - some of them - but they are far to the right of most Republicans, let alone the rest of us.

There are so many things wrong with this candidacy, it's hard to list them all. What's the big deal about being a hockey Mom? That and a cup of hot cocoa will qualify her to be a VP. If she's qualified, maybe I am too:

1. I stayed home with my son for 14 years and didn't run around seeking office. Where are the "family values" here?

2. My 19-year-old son hasn't impregnated any underage girls, and he's not about to enter a marriage that has a snowball's chance in hell of success. Note, I said "hell," not "Alaska." Apparently Gov. Palin didn't impart those "family values" to her kid very well. And guess what, teaching "abstinence only" sure didn't work. I think we should send that kid a case of condoms.

3. She's under investigation for some interesting and corrupt activities as governor.

4. Her views are to the right of Attila the Hun, but she's been chosen to try and woo the Hillary Clinton supporters away from the Democratic Party. How cynical. McCain must think women have no sense at all, and will vote for a woman, any woman, even a woman who opposes everything Hillary stands for, just to see a female in high office. In short, he thinks we are idiots. I pray we prove him abysmally wrong.

And isn't it just special to hear the Republicans scrambling to blow off the embarrassing matter of Bristol Palin's underage pregnancy, by saying it's a family matter? What total hypocrites. Just suppose Obama's daughters were a little older and one of them turned up pregnant. If a major network already called Michelle his "baby mama" instead of his wife, just imagine what they'd be saying if one of his kids was underage, unwed, and pregnant.

No, it is not just a family matter when the 17 year old daughter of a VP nominee becomes pregnant and then is (surely) elbowed into a shotgun wedding with her 18 year old "baby daddy." Not when the grandma-to-be is rabidly anti-abortion, pro-creationism, and thinks the war in Iraq is somehow ordained by God. And, not when other teenagers in less auspicious circumstances might point to her and to Miss Spears as role models. (If they can have a baby at 16 or 17, why can't I?)

And, let's not forget that this tidbit was only revealed because bloggers were speculating that Gov. Palin's 5th child was actually 17-year-old Bristol's out of wedlock child. Otherwise, I'll bet the grand old Republicans would have deep-sixed that information.

Now just let them talk about Obama's lack of experience. At least he's in Congress dealing with federal issues. Palin's been mayor of a town of 6,000 people. I've seen more people sitting on the lawn in Central Park just to hear the Philharmonic. And she's been governor of a state with less than 700,000 people...and some disturbing stuff about her behavior in office is coming out. McCain sure hasn't shown presidential-level judgment with his pick. Contrast that with Obama, who picked a VP with the foreign policy knowledge he's said to lack.

Voters should see through this cynical ploy to divert women away from the Democrats, and kick McCain and Palin's hindquarters straight to the nearest curb.